This contribution of mine is a simple transcription of a primary source useful for finding the names of merchants with business and family interests in Livorno. The printed booklet is available online on the platform ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collections Online) and its full title is: “The answer of the merchants-petitioners, and Trustees for the Factory at Legorn, To The Account of Damages, Laid to the charge of The Great Duke of Toscany, by Sir Alexander Rigby, Mr. Will. Shepard, and Mr. Will. Plowman: Together with Their reply, and The Merchants-Petitioners Second answer thereto. As also Divers Original Papers and Proofs; Deliver’d in Writing to Sir John Cooke, Judge Advocate, and John Pollexfen, Esq; The Delegates appointed by Her Majesty’s Special Command, to Hear what the Petitioners had to say; and to make Their Report thereupon. With several other Matters and Papers since come to Hand from Legorn.“, printed in 1704 in London. Unfortunately the ECCO platform is only available to selected Universities and libraries worldwide and not to the general public or freelance researchers like me, so when I had a chance to access it, I fully transcribed the following three parts which reveal the names of the people I am interested in:
The work took really a long time (almost a year) and a great effort but is now complete in its 15898 single entries that represent a total of 3628 family names. I believe that the registers for which these indexes were made are of the greatest importance for Livorno but also for a much larger audience given the fact that so many non-catholics were living in Livorno, coming from all over the world. Additionally these records include, and are composed mainly of, Jewish people. As everyone is aware of the importance of the Jewish community of Livorno, these records can depict the family networks of all these people for a period just short of 50 years across the 19th century.
If you didn’t follow the other posts about this subject, please take a few moments to read the introduction to these records. On the same page you will find the links to access the indexes. ( EzVN8HdtkCV5rZrTWIbp )
As already done for the Old English Cemetery, I created a new page with a collection of quotes from travellers’ accounts regarding the city of Livorno (or Leghorn). The new section will be evolving with time, as new quotes are found from the travel journals of the 17th-19th centuries. The page is accessible from the main blog page, or by clicking the next link:
If you happen to visit the city of Pisa by bus, chances are that your bus parks at the large bus parking area on Via Pietrasantina, a few hundred yards away from the world heritage site of Piazza dei Miracoli, where thousands of tourists visit the leaning tower everyday.
In this case, unfortunately, you might also happen to walk down Via Pietrasantina to reach the famous square, risking at the same time your life and (more…)
On the Internet site www.bristowefamilies.com, we can readthe passage Reminiscences of my young days, written by Mary Thompson, daughter of Frederick Thompson who was British Vice-Consul in Livorno from 1839 to 1852. The first part of the Reminiscences speaks about Mary’s memories of that period, when Livorno was full of revolutionary ideas that brought to the battle of Porta San Marco in 1849. On the site we can also find information about her father and her family.
There is little known about the first years of Frederick Thompson’s life. We know that he was born about 1805 in Maldon, Essex, England, and that for some unknown reasons he went to Malta where he opened a school. In Malta he met and married Mary Ann [Mary Ann Bingham born 1810, NdR], who was born there from English parents [William Bingham and Eleanor Temple, NdR], and had two children: Fred (born in 1833) and Mary (born in 1835). It is from the information that Mary left us in the form of reminiscences written in her later life in Charlcombe, Somerset, England that it is possible to piece together some of the events surrounding the life of this family. (more…)
The survey of the Old English Cemetery of Livorno which I began in 2009 and my subsequent analysis of the data has revealed an elevated amount of discrepancies. Some examples are: the position of the existing tombstones not matching the complete survey made in 1906 (see below), the great number of missing slabs and tombstones, the astonishing collages of inscription fragments mounted together with no apparent logic, some artistically/historically incoherent monuments, the total loss of the iron railings that were enclosing a number of graves, the mysteriously empty areas, the enormous quantities of debris, dumping material and objects found everywhere, etc…
The very limited local bibliography on the subject lacks any detail on the history of the cemetery, and gives only opinions and hypotheses. It relays unreliable information from previous books and articles and transmits oral statements of unknown origins. Everything about this place has always been uncertain, from the year of its foundation (historians have dated it anywhere from 1594 to 1737), to the events of World War II. On the other hand, Prof. Stefano Villani has provided some very interesting evidence about the enclosure of the cemetery and other documents related to the first hundred years of the burial ground’s existence. I recently discovered the testament of a Leghorn merchant which finally establishes, for the first time, the year of the foundation of this cemetery (see related article on this blog).
Leghorn Merchant Networks 